


Some kind of metaphor, probably.

by Coloured_Rainbow



Category: Captain America (Movies), Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asshole Stephen, Brain Injury, IronStrange, M/M, Memory Loss, Slow Burn, Stephen Strange is just a doctor, Tony Stark Is Sad(tm), directly after Tonys fight with Steve and Bucky, if i ever finish lol, mental problems, sooorttt offff?, stephen is terrible at comfort, takes place during civil war, tony forgets math and english
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 07:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coloured_Rainbow/pseuds/Coloured_Rainbow
Summary: Acalculia: loss of the ability to perform simple arithmetic calculations, typically resulting from disease or injury of the parietal lobe of the brain.Dysphasia: language disorder marked by deficiency in the generation of speech, and sometimes also in its comprehension, due to brain disease or damage to the frontal lobe of the brainInstead of Stephen losing what's most important to him--his hands--Tony Stark loses everything he is.





	Some kind of metaphor, probably.

**Author's Note:**

> ...I do not guarantee at all that I will finish this. That's the downside of having so many ideas :/ I'll do my best, but as you can tell on my page, I already have a lot on my plate and this story comes after some others priority-wise. I just liked this idea too much to not share it. Hope you enjoy what I have! A good 10 pages :P  
> I need some possible beta readers for future chapters on this and some other fics (specifically a Stanchez one) so hmu on tumblr @rainbow-flavoured if you're interested.

“You know, you’ve got to take a decent break at some point.” 

Stephen groggily glanced up from his laptop screen which he had turned on a just few moments prior. He merely let out a monotone hum in reply, conveying his eyes back down to his device. 

“Stephen, you just woke up. At least have breakfast,” Christine rolled her eyes as she set a cup of coffee in front of him.

“The problem isn’t me working too much, but not working enough,” he sighed, reluctantly picking up his mug and taking a sip. He swallowed, nodding. “Hm. Good coffee.”

“Not working enough, are you kidding me?” She put a hand on her hip, ignoring his half-hearted compliment. “Stephen, you never _stop_ working.”

“On the contrary,” he mumbled, sticking a finger into the air. “I’ve been doing nothing but searching for work for weeks.”

“I doubt that; hundreds of people would kill to have you operate on them.”

“Yeah, but that’s stuff that any doctor in the whole building can do.” He waved his hand dismissively, looking back down at his laptop. “I want something more interesting.”

“Uh-huh,” Christine breathed, sitting down on the stool next to him. “Well, then you could at least take a break from _looking_ for work. I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“What do you mean? We’re employed at the same hospital, we’re never apart.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

He sighed. “I feel like I’ve been going in circles for months, Christine. None of these cases are at all complex enough to keep me working for more than a couple days. I want a case, just one case, that will leave me stumped.”

Christine stuck out her lower lip and mockingly frowned. “Oh no, Dr. Perfect is just way too smart, isn’t he?”

“Exactly,” he smirked. “Things can get boring when you have such high intelligence.”

“Well, Mr. Eidetic-Memory, you can worry about how smart you are after breakfast.”

..................................

Tightly closing her eyes and shifting to the side, Christine groaned over Stephen’s obnoxious, sparkly ringtone. “Wha’ time is it…?” She mumbled as Stephen reluctantly reached over and grabbed his phone.

“...2:30 in the morning,” he mumbled through his teeth. “You know I’m on call.”

“Yeah, but this is excessive…” she sighed. “Better be important.”

Sighing, Stephen slid the little green icon to the left and held the speaker to his ear. “Hello?” He paused, a glare forming on his face. “No, I haven’t.” Another pause. “Okay. Okay. Bye.” 

“What was that about?” Christine yawned as Stephen grabbed for the TV remote. 

“It was Barry. He said to turn on the news.”

“Barry Hanger? As in the director of our hospital branch, Mr. Hanger?” She sat up and stretched as Stephen turned on the tv across from their bed. “You call him Barry?” When he didn’t answer, she tried again. “What channel?”

“Any channel, apparently.” He quickly scrolled through different icons on the screen, switching to HDMI 3 and clicking up the cable guide. “He wants us to head over right after.”

“Goddammit. I was really looking forward to sleeping in.”

Instead of answering, Stephen simply clicked onto one of his most frequently watched news channels and watched intently as it loaded.

_”--the Winter Soldier himself attending alongside Captain America. They were here and gone before any authorities could be properly notified. After dropping off the body at Metro-General hospital, witnesses say that the Captain requested for a doctor by the name of Stephen Strange, one of the most skilled neurosurgeons in the entire country. The Captain wanted to make sure that the playboy scientist was only in the best of hands. Stark’s current conditions are unknown, but these photographs that bystanders managed to capture don’t--”_

At some point, Stephen tuned out the news anchor’s voice as he stared intently at the blurry images. Tony Stark--the world renowned scientist who pioneered nanotechnology, arguably one of the most brilliant men alive in current time--was dying in his hospital, and Captain America himself requested Stephen’s services.

Christine glanced over, and immediately sighed at the huge grin plastered on Stephen’s face. “Don’t let it go to your ego,” she mumbled, tossing the blankets off of herself and standing up. “Get dressed, come on. He doesn’t look in good condition. If you don’t get your ass over there, they might just let someone else do it.”

“This is just what I was looking for,” he laughed, following Christine’s lead in getting dressed. “Something interesting.”

“...He looks bad,” she quietly added as she pulled on a fresh pair of pants. “A couple wounds to his abdomen, it looks like. What’s he doing getting injured at this time of night?”

“Evil never sleeps,” Stephen answered with a bit too much giddiness. “Probably just another brawl; they can’t always go in the hero’s favour. I’m sure they’ll fill us in when we get there.”

“Right. Just. Try to act a little more serious when we get the hospital?” Christine sighed as she shrugged on her jacket. “It’s kind of embarrassing when you smile in the operating room.”

“I can smile all I want,” he boasted, his scoff borderlining at a giggle. “I’m going to save Tony Stark’s goddamn life. They’ll let me do anything after this.”

“More so than they already do…?”

“Yes! This--This is a game changer, Christine.”

“...Right.” She let her eyes drift over one last time to the television before Stephen shut it off. “Game changer.”

..................................

“It’s not good.”

“Nice to see you too.”

“Not now, Stephen.” As soon as Stephen and Christine walked through the hospital doors, their newer colleague, Dr. Drake Hanson, rushed towards them and held out a clipboard. 

Stephen nodded and walked alongside him, but didn’t drop his grin. “Run down?”

“He took a blow to that device in his chest, leaving shrapnel scattered throughout the wound. Lucky for him, it narrowly missed any vital organs or ribs, so while you were getting over here, they were able to stabilize his heart. It wasn’t too hard, considering, but there are some pieces of metal that are too close to the heart to remove right now. Besides that, he’s stable there. The real problem is his brain.”

“Head wounds?” Christine chimed in, but Hanson quickly shut that down.

“No. Well, not exactly. He was mostly okay on the way inside and while we were operating on his heart, but it looks like he had a stroke before Captain America was able to drop him off. There not quite sure of the cause yet, but he had another one just a minute ago. Major clotting of the frontal and parietal lobes.”

“He’s already in the operating room?”

“Yes.”

“So,” Stephen concluded, “I just need to relieve the clotting in his brain?”

“Yes.”

Stephen couldn’t help but let his smile deflate in disappointment. He sighed when Christine shot him a questioning look. “This shouldn’t take more than two hours,” he mumbled.

“Yes. Which is great,” she nudged him gently with her elbow, her words leaking through her teeth. “This means that he should be okay; you’ve done this a thousand times.”

“Exactly my point,” he whined. 

“Really?” Hanson chirped as they walked down into the washroom beside the operating room. “You’re complaining about getting to--we can find someone else.”

“Oh, I’ll do it,” Stephen snapped. “I just thought that maybe--whatever. I’ll scrub-up and meet you in there in two minutes.”

“Make it one,” Hanson shot back. “He’s losing oxygen quick.”

..................................

_.....I can’t. I’m sorry…_  
………………………………….  
... _no, help me get him………_  
……………………………...  
…….. _Bucky, don’t--!........_  
……………………………..  
…………….. _Holy shit! Holy--get him up! He’s bleeding_ …….  
…………………………………………………………………….  
…... _I didn’t…. We don’t have to take him--we can fix it…_ ……  
……………………………………………………………………….  
…………. _we have to take him in. It won’t take_ ……  
………………………………………………………….  
…. _BP quickly dropping! He’s losing a lot of blood…_ ….  
……………………………………………………………...  
……. _.work on the heart first…_ ….  
……………………………………..  
………. _..Stephen Strange……_ ……………..  
………………………………………………….  
……………………………………………………………..  
…………………………………………………………………………...

Sucking in a deep gasp, Tony Stark woke up in a hospital bed. 

His vision blurry, he rolled onto his side and felt around to take in his surroundings. He was immediately drawn to the discomfort of a tube that split into each of his nostrils, his first reaction being to rip it out. He let out a small cry of pain at the gesture, but continued to remove the tape from his arms and extract the tubes that ran into his veins as well. He attempted to sling his legs over the side of the bed, but was stopped in his tracks by a head-splitting migraine before he could. 

His hand came up to meet his arc reactor, surprised to see another contraption in its place once his eyes were able to focus. It looked much like the first model that the terrorists had installed when he was taken to a bunker after the attack that took down the truck he was riding in Afghanistan. He vividly recalled the wires that ran from his chest into a large electromagnet, his chest pulsing under pounds of oily palladium that shone a ghastly silver under Ho Yinsen’s makeshift operating lights. Everything around him in this hospital seemed clean and bright in the light that shined through the aluminium blinds, but Tony felt sweaty and dirty as he reminisced the day he nearly died. A surge of panic ran through him at the memory, causing him to tense up and still his movements. 

Did someone take him again? It looked like a nicer hospital, but the villains had really been upping their game lately. He could be anywhere on the world right now, maybe back in Afghanistan. Where was he before this…? He couldn’t remember. He went to a bunker? He watched something on a TV and Cap was there. 

“You’ve been under for a good three days.” Tony let out a shout, jumping at the voice of someone he didn’t notice sitting next to his bed by the window. The man looked up at him with hazel-blue eyes, his hair slightly falling over his gaze, unfazed by Tony’s sudden outburst. “Signs of mental damage. You had a series of strokes due to clotting in the brain. I was able to perform surgery in time to save your life, but not to preserve every brain cell. We have to do a few more tests to make sure your memory is okay…” He paused, looking Tony over with a bit of amusement. “Although it seems that your muscle memory works just fine. Any numb limbs?”

Tony paused before he let out a hesitant, “...No.” He cleared his throat relaxing back into the bed. “Strokes. When did that--at my house? Why am I here?”

“Do you not remember how you got here?”

“Jesus, you get right to the point, don’t you?” Tony sighed, rubbing his temples. “God, my head is pounding.” He could feel himself relax as his thoughts started to clear. “No, I don’t remember that well.”

“Do you recall getting impaled through that device in your chest?”

Tony’s eyes widened in recollection. “The arc reactor. Steve, he…” He trailed off, the memories hitting him straight in his core with the force of a train. 

Steve. Bucky. _His parents._

Tony clenched his fists, but couldn’t find the energy to get angry. His whole body ached and his head was pounding and he was stapled down to a damn bed again. He took a deep breath, working hard to keep his calm. 

“No. Not much.”

“Hm.” The man hummed, standing up from his chair. “You do remember who you are, yes?” Tony could barely recognize a hint of a joke somewhere in that sentence.

“Yes,” Tony rolled his eyes.

“Well, as long as we’re on the same page, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Tony Stark.” Tony took a long look at the doctor’s extended hand before he shakily returned the gesture; his fingers trembled in the man’s grip, but if he noticed, he didn’t show it. “Do you know who I am?”

Tony let his hand fall to his side as his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Uh, no.” At the man’s expression, Tony continued. “Why would I, it’s not like a lot of doctors have publicity. Are you, like, a scientist too?”

“Just a doctor,” he clarified.

“Yeah, my point exactly.”

“Maybe it’s just your memory.”

“My memory’s fine,” Tony chuckled. 

“So you remember what happened, then. With you getting impaled.”

“Don’t be a smartass--what are you, a detective? How about you be a doctor and leave the interrogating to my girlfriend; I’m sure she’ll have plenty of questions when I call her.” It suddenly hit Tony that he, in fact, didn’t have a girlfriend at the moment. Not that the public knew that.

“She already visited,” the man sighed. “We called her the first day--no one has mentioned me before?”

“Why are so insistent about this? I have my own medical center at Stark Towers, I don’t know a lot of doctors, okay? That’s it.”

“Captain America requested me by name to be the one to give you surgery. Ring any bells?” He looked smug, but Tony didn’t seem convinced. 

“Look,” Tony shrugged. “I don’t remember a lot, okay? I do remember seeing the pretty-boy, American hero at some point, but that’s it.” He sounded tired enough that if he didn’t know better, Tony could convince himself that it was the truth. “I don’t, however, remember you. At all. At any point. I never forget a douche for the sake of not having to interact with him again. I do remember, however, passing out and waking up in a hospital with wires poking out of my chest for the second goddamn time in my life: too many fucking times, if you ask me.” He had to pause to catch his breath. “Thank you for saving my life, I guess, okay? Cap has a lot of connections, so I’m sure he just heard about what a _delight_ you are through the grapevine and remembered you in the spur of the moment when he needed to dump my body off somewhere before he ran away.”

God, his head was pounding. At some point, Tony closed his eyes and leaned further back in his bed as he talked. Despite how hateful his words were, the weak tone that they came out in softened the blow a significant amount. 

“My name is Stephen Strange,” he grumbled through his teeth. “Don’t forget it.”

“Oh, I won’t. How else will I know how to request a different doctor?”

“You’re pretty smug, considering I’m the one who saved your life.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty grateful about that, but don’t act like you weren’t just doing your job.”

“Excuse me?” 

“When I come back from, oh I don’t know, saving an entire city, for example…” As Tony talked, his eyes trailed along the wires that connected to the electromagnet. “...do you think that I’m met with nothing but praise?”

“You’re met with money.”

“So are you,” he chuckled, looking out the window. “Yeah, there’s money involved sometimes, and a grateful fan here and there. But it’s also a lot of half-hearted parties with dumb awards and people criticizing how I could have done it better, or saved more people, or protected this building instead of that.” Talking to this guy, Tony couldn’t imagine why Cap would request him. He didn’t seem like anyone Mr. America would ever hang out with. However, he did gang up on Tony and nearly get him killed for trying to take down a dangerous hitman who killed his parents, so maybe there’s actually a lot that he doesn’t know about Steve. Lost in thought, he watched as Stephen’s mouth moved but didn’t hear any of the words that came out. Tony blinked and something about his expression must have showed Stephen that Tony mentally checked out of the conversation, because the doctor just sighed. 

“Seems you’re remembering everything just fine. I guess I’ll send down a hot nurse to pry it out of you.”

Taking a deep breath, Tony’s eyes trailed around the room. He seemed to be looking everywhere but at the doctor; he just wanted him to leave so he could be alone. Pursing his lips and hoping that his silence would drive Stephen away, his brows furrowed together at the sight of a poster on the wall. It was a chart with diagrams of individual body parts, but Tony could only tell so through the images. He squinted and leaned forward, but the words didn’t get any clearer. He wasn’t sure it was even a language he knew; the curves of the letters didn’t seem the least bit familiar. 

Stephen said something that Tony, again, didn’t hear. 

Tony looked at the letters and traced their shapes against the mattress with his finger, but nothing came to him. He felt his chest get tight and his breathing quicken and this time he heard when Stephen called out his name.

“Stark.” Stephen stated it with enough annoyance that it probably wasn’t the first time he tried to get Tony’s attention. 

“We’re in America, right?”

Stephen paused, for the first time looking genuinely surprised. “Ameri--yes, of course. Why would we ship you to another country for such an urgent surgery?”

Tony sighed in relief. Maybe he was overthinking things--they just have a bilingual worker who put it up. Looking around the room, however, none of the posters seemed to be in English. Ignoring whatever questions the doctor was asking, Tony brought up his wrist and looked at his hospital bracelet. 

He couldn’t read that either. 

“Are you lying?” Tony breathed, running a shaky hand over the wires running out of his chest. “Where the hell am I?”

“Okay, I guess I should put you down for delusional,” Stephen muttered. “Maybe you hit your head a little too hard.”

“I’m not--the posters!”

“...What.”

“Nothing is--It’s not in English! I’m not crazy, what, do you have somebody Arabian running the place?” Tony spat, his shakiness quickly leaking into his voice. “I want these--these _wires_ out of my chest and I want my _phone_ so I can call Pepper! Right now.”

Instead of replying, Stephen walked around to the other side of the bed and shined a light in Tony’s eyes. He immediately flinched, leading Stephen to hold his eyelids open to get a better look. Tony shook him off and glared, rubbing his eyes. 

“How do you spell your name?”

“What?” Tony demanded, scooting as far away from the doctor as his physical restraints would allow. 

“Your name. Spell it.”

“It’s…” Tony searched for the letters in his mind, but couldn’t find any. He simply shook his head. “No, I--I want to talk to my girlfriend.”

“Stark, please just tell me you can spell your name.”

Tony let out a frustrated shout, tightly closing his eyes. “I can’t, I can’t, okay? I’m tired and I can’t think right now and you yelling at me isn’t helping, smart guy!” 

Something resembling a worried look flashed over the doctor’s face before it went slack with realization. “The frontal lobe.”

“What?”

“Of course, you had--” Stephen nodded along to his own thoughts, referring to his clipboard to frantically write something down. 

He waited a few moments for Stephen to continue, but when he didn’t, Tony called out for him. “Hey Dr. Douche, are you gonna--”

“You had a blood clots in your frontal and parietal lobes. Frontal lobe holds your…” He trailed off, mumbling to himself. “You may have slight… or heavy, dysphasia.”

“Have what?”

“Although you just woke up, you’re in early stages, so it might be a fluke.”

“English, please,” Tony demanded sharply. 

“You’re ability to speak seems fine, however…”

“World! To! Strange!” Stephen finally looked up to meet eyes with Tony, who seemed more than frustrated. “Explain?”

“Dysphasia is the… loss of the ability to understand words. Could be talking, or writing, or comprehending words spoken to you…” He began to drift, snapping his attention back to Tony. “You may have to relearn to read.”

“Oh, is that all?” Tony choked on his sarcasm, the words dying in his throat over the sound of his heartbeat. “Relearn to--are you serious?”

“Well, can you spell your name?”

Tony took a deep breath, closing his eyes. He tried to envision the letters and match them to names, but nothing surfaced. Of the letters he could remember, he couldn’t recall what they looked like. “I think it starts with an S, but uh.. I-I can’t remember what it… looks… like.”

“Oh dear,” Stephen mumbled. “Well, we’re obviously going to have to run more tests. There’s a chance that you just need some recovery time, but I wouldn’t think that…” The doctor kept talking, but at some point Tony stopped listening. 

Relearn to read? That could take years. Does this mean he forgot all of the basic rules of English too? 

Questions were swimming so fast in his mind that he didn’t even notice when Stephen got up and left the room to get a nurse. He eventually returned and they wheeled the bed and the electromagnet out of the room into another, darker one. They ran some routine tests and asked questions that Tony could hardly hear over the ringing in his ears. Getting him into some of the machines to run scans was more difficult than it should have been with all of the wires, but Tony silently complied and let them take their time. 

In between each of the tests, Tony would filter through their results, but none of his prior knowledge could decipher even what the images meant, let alone the words. They took him in for a full body scan and Tony relished in the absence of talking once Stephen and his nurse left the room. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he tried his best to recall any English. He silently tested his name on his lips, repeating it in rhythm to a silent beat: _Anthony Edward Stark. Anthony Edward Stark. Anthony Edward Stark._

The words played in his mind and he could hear them clear as a bell, but he could do nothing to invision would it would look on paper. 

He raised his voice to a whisper, shutting his eyes tighter.

_Anthony Edward Stark. Anthony Edward Stark…_

He could practically hear his father calling out to him. Howard really was one of the only people to ever refer to him by his full name. They weren’t exactly close enough to be on a nickname basis; them sharing a surname was probably the only thing stopping him from referring to Tony as simply ‘Stark.’

How long had it been since someone called him ‘Anthony?’

Not since Barnes murdered his parents. 

Tony paused, opening his eyes. Something felt off. Thinking about his father, he suddenly couldn’t remember whether they had last talked years ago or a just few months ago.

How long was a month, again?

His breathing quickened as he tried to remember how many… years were in a month? Or was weeks in a month? Weeks in an hour? 

Tony jerked his arm to the side, spreading his palm along the side of the cylinder machine he was concealed in. 

He wasn’t having trouble with the concept of time, but the numbers surrounding it. 

He couldn’t forget numbers. He needed numbers--numbers was all he had. Cold hard calculus and trigonometry and algebra: it was all he was. His whole career. Everything Tony Stark is was math and equations and number theory. He wracked his brain and tried to recall an equation, a date, a time, a number--anything. 

Slamming his hand against the side of the scanner, he let out a small cry. “Help. He--Strange, get me out of here. Strange? Strange!” He frantically began to beat his fist against the metal of the machine. “I need out of this machine! Right now! Hello? Hello!” He tried to calm his breathing as the bed he was on began to retract and the nurse came rushing into the room behind Stephen. 

“What’s wrong?” Stephen asked as Tony rolled out into sight from the confines of the scanner. “You didn’t feel any sharp pain, did you? In your head?” His tone borderlined on worried, but his face remained calm and professional as he placed a hand against Tony’s temple to check his temperature.

“No, I uh…” Tony swallowed, closing his eyes as he removed Stephen’s hand. “I can’t… I was thinking of the… I, uh…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. The words caught in his throat and his body began to shake. He was so tired and so weak. He needed to think about anything but this--anything but Barnes or Steve or forgetting letters and numbers--but remembering all of that was better than forgetting. He couldn’t forget anything else.

He didn’t know what to do. So he did the only thing that he could do with his mental and physical restraints: for the first time in a long time, Anthony Edward Stark cried without regard to who was watching. 

His whole body convulsed with painful, wailing sobs as his body collapsed in on itself, his knees coming as close to his chest as he could bring them.

Everything hurt. He wanted it to stop. There was nothing he could do to take back control and he hated it. 

Stephen immediately pulled back at his sobbing, clearing his throat in discomfort. Before he had the chance to say anything, The nurse was already sitting beside him, softly speaking words of comfort to hopefully ground him. She gently placed a hand on his arm, nodding. 

“We should probably sedate him,” Stephen suggested, watching as Tony buried his face under his trembling hands. “Sudden emotional outbursts could be linked to--”

Tony sucked in a surprised gasp when the nurse suddenly stood up from her spot, speaking to Stephen in a low voice. “He’s hurting, Stephen. You may be the best neurosurgeon out there, but you are lousy at bedside manner.” She sighed. “I think what he needs is to rest. We got a lot done today, so we’ll work with that and pick this back up next week.”

“Week?” Stephen scoffed. “We don’t--this is urgent, Christine.” Tony sniffed, wiping away the drying tears that stained his cheeks. “We don’t have a week to sit around while he recuperates.”

“He is--!” The nurse, who Tony now knew was named Christine, let out a frustrated shout. “He already has enough on his plate. He is hurting and probably confused and angry and… and he needs to rest. That’s my diagnosis and that’s what we’re doing.”

“He’s _my_ patient!”

“You guys are more than just co-workers, huh?” Tony rasped, making both Stephen and Christine turn his way. “How long you been together?”

“Long enough,” Christine sighed. “Come on, we’ll take you back to--”

“ _Christine_.”

“I can’t count,” Tony interjected, his voice forcefully cracking. 

At that, they both fell silent. 

“I-I can’t remember time or equations or--or what day it is. Everything, it’s all gone.” Tony fought back another crying fit, running a hand down his face. “I can’t read. I probably can’t write. I can’t do math…” He couldn’t help as another tear trailed down his face. “I’m gonna have to go with your wifey on this one--I need a fucking nap.”

“Girlfriend,” Stephen corrected in a mumble, gaining a look of fury from Christine. Before she could retaliate, he continued: “Fine. Take the week off.”

Without another word, Christine began to silently help Tony off of the bed onto a portable one. Stephen stood alongside her, assisting with wheeling out the electromagnet. 

Tony observed them and the way they communicated to each other without speaking. He could tell that they’ve been together for a while; long enough to get a little sick of each other. Even from one fight, he could tell that there was a lot of unspoken resentment that neither of them would probably admit to--more so than a normal relationship calls for. 

Focusing on his doctor and nurse’s love life seemed so minute next to everything else, but it served as a good enough distraction from the trials looming in the upcoming weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for indulging this fic! Wrote this mostly for myself haha. Ideas for future chapters and criticism is very welcome on this story specifically <3


End file.
